Scope

This Standard describes a thermal vacuum test to determine the outgassing screening properties of materials proposed for use in the fabrication of spacecraft and associated equipment, for vacuum facilities used for flight hardware tests and for certain launcher hardware.

This Standard covers the following:

critical design parameters of the test system;

critical test parameters such as temperature, time, pressure;

material sample preparation;

conditioning parameters for samples and collector plates;

presentation of the test data;

acceptance criteria;

certification of test systems and their operators by audits and round robin tests.

The test described in this Standard is applicable for all unmanned spacecraft, launchers, payloads, experiments. The test is also valid for external hardware of inhabited space systems and for hardware to be used in terrestrial vacuum test facilities. The outgassing and condensation acceptance criteria for a material depend upon the application and location of the material and can be more severe than the standard requirements as given in clause 5.5.3.1.

This standard may be tailored for the specific characteristics and constrains of a space project in conformance with ECSS-S-ST-00.